How to use Noto Color Emoji with lualatex?

Question

I want to use Noto Color Emoji with lualatex (package fonts-noto-color-emoji on my box). However, this fails as follows. How to use Noto Color Emoji with lualatex?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Noto Color Emoji}
\begin{document}
😺
👅 
\end{document}

Error:

$ lualatex emoji.tex 
This is LuaTeX, Version 1.07.0 (TeX Live 2019/dev/Debian) 
 restricted system commands enabled.
(./emoji.tex
LaTeX2e <2018-12-01>

luaotfload | main : initialization completed in 2.224 seconds
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2018/09/03 v1.4i Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo))
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.sty
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3packages/xparse/xparse.sty
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/expl3.sty
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/expl3-code.tex)
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/l3kernel/l3pdfmode.def)))
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec-luatex.sty
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/fontenc.sty
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/tuenc.def))
(/usr/share/texlive/texmf-dist/tex/latex/fontspec/fontspec.cfg))) (./emoji.aux)
[1{/var/lib/texmf/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.map}] (./emoji.aux))
 409 words of node memory still in use:
   3 hlist, 1 vlist, 1 rule, 2 glue, 3 kern, 1 glyph, 5 attribute, 48 glue_spec
, 5 attribute_list, 1 write nodes
   avail lists: 2:15,3:4,4:1,5:21,6:1,7:13,8:1,9:6
</usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/NotoColorEmoji.ttf
! error:  (file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/NotoColorEmoji.ttf) (ttf): sfnt 
table not found
!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

Answer 1

Update november 2019

With lualatex-dev (based now on luahbtex) and luaotfload 3.11 the example looks like this

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Noto Color Emoji}[Renderer=Harfbuzz]
\begin{document}
😺
👅
\end{document}  

Old answer

It works with harflatex (How to install HarfTeX on TeXLive?):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{harfload}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Noto Color Emoji}[RawFeature={mode=harf}]
\begin{document}
😺
👅
\end{document} 

Answer 2

Ulrike Fischer's insightful answer didn't work for me (very likely my fault) since non-emoji text wouldn't be rendered in the resulting PDF.

I fixed this using the custom \emoji command that restricts the scope where Noto Color Emoji is applied:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\newcommand{\emoji}[1]{
  {\setmainfont{Noto Color Emoji}[Renderer=Harfbuzz]{#1}}
}

\begin{document}
  \begin{itemize}
    \item Happy: \emoji{😍😁😂😃😊🤓😇}
    \item Neutral: \emoji{😐🤐🥶🥸😬😶}
    \item Not amused: \emoji{🙁🤨🥱😠😱😿😈😭}
    \item More emojis: \emoji{🎉🪃🦩🐮🕵️🧑🏼‍🔬🍍🫖🐰💖🧑🏽‍🦳👹}
  \end{itemize}
\end{document}

Compiling the file with lualatex produces this:

I also tested it successfully in a Beamer presentation but had to use \fontspec{Noto Color Emoji}[RawFeature={mode=harf}] to get the emojis to show up.

---

lualatex --version gives

This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.12.0 (TeX Live 2020/Arch Linux)

Answer 3

Alternatively, we can use Symbola font. After apt-get install fonts-symbola, the following file produces what is desired:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Symbola}
\begin{document}
😺
👅 
\end{document}

We can also use Segoe UI Emoji font bundled with MS Windows.